


Passion on This Lonely Sea

by Zabbers



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2606603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were five kinds of kisses with Ianto.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passion on This Lonely Sea

There were five kinds of kisses with Ianto. 

There was the prim secretarial kiss, dutiful and a little incredulous, two steps removed from the kind of spousal peck you might get on the way out the door with your morning coffee and hot buttered toast, the kids pretending not to watch from the kitchen table. Only with a wink and a nudge and an allusion to stopwatches. In a universe of kisses, it was the quickie, the five minutes over an office desk, the skirt pushed up around a waspish waist while steno pads flutter to the floor, surprise all but feigned on open lips.

At its opposite was the resentful kiss, and if it was possible for a human being to make his whole body colder, Ianto did it, every muscle stiff and still. It drove Jack mad, the way Ianto would radiate chilling defiance like a surly teenager, like he had a personal shield that slipped over his hooded eyes, all the while offering his mouth like a sacrifice. It made Jack want to take him all the harder, thrust his tongue into that emptiness, suck and bite on lip and cheek. Try to get a rise out of him, anything, though it made him sick afterwards to do it, like he was the monster Ianto had once called him.

Used to be, these were the only kinds of kisses Jack got, and for a long time, he told himself he was fine with that. But then he died and they thought it might be for good, and he found out he wasn't. Because when he came back, when he kissed Ianto, what he got was neither duly flirtatious nor coolly unwelcoming. He stood across the Hub letting Ianto see that he was alive, watched the restrained urgency in walk and eyes, kissed tear-salty lips that didn't say nearly as much as the disbelieving, relieved embrace that followed. It hit him, then, how much Ianto needed him, needed him to be alive, to come back, time after time, an undying certainty in the midst of so much death.

And it hit him how much he needed Ianto to need him.

Because Jack might have been a fixed point, but he didn't feel it, most of the time. Most of the time, it felt like his life was one long sandstorm, all chaos and confusion and threads whipping every which way, each of them impossible to grab and hold on to. Ianto made him feel like the anchor he was supposed to be. From Ianto's perspective, nothing changed: Other people died; Jack lived. It was simple, and Jack realized that he had become pretty damned addicted to feeling like an anchor. And an anchor wasn't much good without the things it clung to.

This scared Jack, scared him shitless, for all sorts of reasons. The easiest ones involved the ephemeral nature of human life and the atrocious nature of the things they had already done to one another. The harder ones, he didn't think about until he found himself chained up in a steamy room on someone's battlecruiser, and not in the good way. By then, Ianto was most likely very, very dead, and it was much too late.

Jack was lucky, though. Luckier than he deserved to be, he knew, because even when he didn't want them, his life was full of second chances. This time, boy did he want that second chance. He'd spent a year coming and going, mostly from that one spot in the bowels of the Valiant. He'd kept his eyes open and seen a lot, learned a lot about fear and loneliness and the pursuit of something that won't ever stay still. It turned out it really was simple: He realized that he would pick Ianto's certainty, Ianto's faith, any day.

When he got Ianto back, he knew that he had to really get him back, for the first time. He had to do it right. So, he asked Ianto out to dinner. On a date. And that was how he discovered the fourth kind of kiss. The kind that started with a whole lot of enthusiasm and continued with a whole lot of enthusiasm through the middle and kept being enthusiastic right up until the end. The kind that had a lot of tongue, and a fair amount of suction, and deft hands that didn't spend all their time pulling him in tighter by the back of the neck. Like Ianto had been waiting a lot longer than the time he had been hovering around, quiet and patient and helpful. Like every minute of his life he was waiting for that kiss, and he was determined to get his money's worth.

Jack was happy to give him his money's worth.

Of course, at the conclusion of this dazzling display of oral zeal, Ianto would straighten his tie (or pull up his trousers), check himself in the nearest reflective surface, and resume his sphinx-like existence as the secret power behind Torchwood as if nothing had happened. Jack would be left trying to figure out if his team could still function should he decide not to bother trying to cover his lap.

There were five kinds of kisses, though, with Ianto. The fifth was Jack's favorite. It wasn't dutiful, or resentful, or frightened, or fervent. It just was. It was Ianto. It was Ianto kissing Jack in a small, still moment that was fleeting as life and constant as undying. It didn't have to mean something, and it didn't try to mean anything. It came with his coffee in the morning and his coat at night, and the best part was that he could have it any time in between, too, if he wanted. It was better than feeling like an anchor. It made him feel...normal.

There were five kinds of kisses with Ianto. And Jack couldn't wait to find out how many more.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal, 3 July 2008. Thanks to aliashpfanatic for a quick and dirty beta.


End file.
